Here’s a look at the life of world renowned primatologist, activist and conservationist Jane Goodall.
Personal:
Birth date: April 3, 1934
Birth place: London, England
Birth name: Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall
Father: Mortimer Morris-Goodall, businessman
Mother: Margaret Myfanwe (Joseph) Morris-Goodall, a novelist
Marriages: Derek Bryceson (1975-1980, his death); Hugo van Lawick (March 28, 1964-1974, divorced)
Children: with van Lawick: Hugo, 1967
Education: Cambridge University, Ph.D. Ethology, 1965
Other Facts:
Obtained a doctorate without receiving a bachelor’s or master’s first.
Was the first scientist to give names to her research subjects instead of the conventional practice of assigning them numbers.
Found that chimps engage in warfare with neighboring communities and that chimps are capable of altruism, which they display by adopting unrelated orphaned infants.
First to observe chimpanzees eating meat and making and using tools
Timeline:
1956 – While working as an assistant in a London film studio, she receives an invitation from a friend to visit her farm in Kenya.
1957 – Arrives in Africa and meets famous archeologist and paleontologist Louis Leakey. He hires her as an assistant and then asks her to study a group of chimpanzees living in Tanzania.
July 1960 – Arrives at the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanzania to begin her study of chimpanzees.
October 1960 – Goodall observes chimpanzees eating meat; they were thought to be vegetarians.
November 1960 – Observes the first recorded instance of chimpanzees making and using tools.
1977 – Founds the Jane Goodall Institute.
1991 – Begins the Roots & Shoots environmental program for young people.
2002 – Designated a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
February 20, 2004 – Is invested as a Dame of the British Empire at Buckingham Palace.
2010 – A documentary film about her life, “Jane’s Journey,” is released.
March 2013 – Apologizes for plagiarized passages in her book, “Seeds of Hope: Wisdom and Wonder from the World of Plants,” scheduled to be released in April. The Washington Post first reported on the borrowed passages, saying they came from Wikipedia and other websites.
September 30, 2014 – A new species of orchid is named after Goodall. The Dendrobium goodallianum orchid was collected in Papua New Guinea in 2003.